A HIDEOUS, FEARFUL HOUR
§1
Young man--tall, spare, with sallow skin and shifty, restless
eyes--pushed unceremoniously past the old servant, threw his hat and
cane down on the nearest chair, and hurrying across the vestibule,
entered the salon where the beautiful Spaniard, a picture of serene
indifference, sat ready to receive him.
She had chosen for the setting of this scene, a small settee covered in
old rose brocade. On this she half sat, half reclined, with an open book
in her hand, her elbow resting on the frame of the settee, her cheek
leaning against her hand. Immediately behind her, the light from an oil
lamp tempered by a shade of rose-coloured silk, outlined with a
brilliant, glowing pencil the contour of her small head, one exquisite
shoulder, and the mass of her raven hair, whilst it accentuated the cool
half-tones on her diaphanous gown, on the round bare arms and bust, the
tiny sandalled feet and cross-gartered legs.
A picture in truth to dazzle the eyes of any man! Tallien should have
been at her feet in an instant. The fact that he paused in the doorway
bore witness to the unruly thoughts that ran riot in his brain.
"Ah, citizen Tallien!" the fair Theresia exclaimed with a perfect
assumption of sang-froid. "You are the first to arrive, and are indeed
welcome; for I was nearly swooning with ennui. Well!" she added, with a
provocative smile, and extended a gracious arm in his direction. "Are
you not going to kiss my hand?"
"I heard a voice," was all the response which he gave to this seductive
invitation. "A man's voice. Whose was it?"
She raised a pair of delicately pencilled eyebrows. Her eyes became as
round and as innocent-looking as a child's.
"A man's voice?" she riposted with a perfect air of astonishment. "You
are crazy, mon ami; or else are crediting my faithful Pepita with a
virile bass, which in truth she doth not possess!"
"Whose voice was it?" Tallien reiterated, making an effort to speak
calmly, even though he was manifestly shaking with choler.
Whereupon the fair Theresia, no longer gracious or arch, looked him up
and down as if he were no better than a lacquey.
"Ah, ça!" she rejoined coldly. "Are you perchance trying to
cross-question me? By what right, I pray you, citizen Tallien, do you
assume this hectoring tone in my presence? I am not yet your wife,
remember; and 'tis not you, I imagine, who are the dictator of France."
"Do not tease me, Theresia!" the man interposed hoarsely. "Bertrand
Moncrif is here."
For the space of a second, or perhaps less, Theresia gave no reply to
the taunt. Her quick, alert brain had already faced possibilities, and
she was far too clever a woman to take the risks which a complete
evasion of the truth would have entailed at this moment. She did not, in
effect, know whether Tallien was speaking from positive information
given to him by spies, or merely from conjecture born of jealousy.
Moreover, another would be here presently--another, whose spies were
credited with omniscience, and whom she might not succeed in dominating
with a smile or a frown, as he could the love-sick Tallien. Therefore,
after that one brief instant's reflection she decided to temporise, to
shelter behind a half-truth, and replied, with a quick glance from under
her long lashes:
"I am not teasing you, citizen. Bertrand came here for shelter awhile
ago."
Tallien drew a quick sigh of satisfaction, and she went on carelessly:
"But, obviously, I could not keep him here. He seemed hurt and
frightened. . . . He has been gone this past half-hour."
For a moment it seemed as if the man, in face of this obvious lie, would
flare out into a hot retort; but Theresia's luminous eyes subdued him,
and before the cool contempt expressed by those exquisite lips, he felt
all his blustering courage oozing away.
"The man is an abominable and an avowed traitor," he said sullenly.
"Only two hours ago----"
"I know," she broke in coldly. "He vilified Robespierre. A dangerous
thing to do. Bertrand was ever a fool, and he lost his head."
"He will lose it more effectually to-morrow," Tallien retorted grimly.
"You mean that you would denounce him?"
"That I _will_ denounce him. I would have done so to-night, before
coming here, only--only----"
"Only what?"
"I was afraid he might be here."
Theresia broke into a ringing if somewhat artificial peal of laughter.
"I must thank you, citizen, for this consideration of my feelings. It
was, in truth, thoughtful of you to think of sparing me a scandal. But,
since Bertrand is _not_ here----"
"I know where he lodges. He'll not escape, citoyenne. My word on it!"
Tallien spoke very quietly, but with that concentrated fury of which a
fiercely jealous man is ever capable. He had remained standing in the
doorway all this while, his eyes fixed on the beautiful woman before
him, but his attention feverishly divided between her and what might be
going on in the vestibule behind him.
In answer to his last threatening words, the lovely Theresia rejoined,
more seriously:
"So as to make sure I do not escape either!" And a flash of withering
anger shot from her dark eyes on the unromantic figure of her adorer.
"Or you, mon ami! You are determined that Mme. Roland's fate shall
overtake me, eh? And no doubt you will be thrilled to the marrow when
you see my head fall into your precious salad-bowl. Will yours follow
mine, think you? Or will you prefer to emulate citizen Roland's more
romantic ending?"
Even while she spoke, Tallien had been unable to repress a shudder.
"Theresia, in heaven's name----!" he murmured.
"Bah, mon ami! There is no longer a heaven these days. You and your
party have carefully abolished the Hereafter. So, after you and I have
taken our walk up the steps of the scaffold----"
"Theresia!"
"Eh, what?" she went on coolly. "Is that not perchance what you have in
contemplation? Moncrif, you say, is an avowed traitor. Has openly
vilified and insulted your demi-god. He has been seen coming to my
apartments. Good! I tell you that he is no longer here. But let that
pass. He is denounced. Good! Sent to the guillotine. Good again! And
Theresia Cabarrus, in whose house he tried to seek refuge, much against
her will, goes to the guillotine in his company. The prospect may please
you, mon ami, because for the moment you are suffering from a senseless
attack of jealousy. But I confess that it does not appeal to me."
The man was silent now; awed against his will. His curiously restless
eyes swept over the graceful apparition before him. Insane jealousy was
fighting a grim fight in his heart with terror for his beloved. Her
argument was a sound one. Even he was bound to admit that Powerful
though he was in the Convention, his influence was as nothing compared
with that of Robespierre. And he knew his redoubtable colleague well
enough that an insult such as Moncrif had put upon him in the Rue St.
Honoré this night would never be forgiven, neither in the young
hot-head himself nor in any of his friends, adherents, or mere pitying
sympathisers.
Theresia Cabarrus was clever enough and quick enough to see that she had
gained one point.
"Come and kiss my hand," she said, with a little sigh of satisfaction.
This time the man obeyed, without an instant's hesitation. Already he
was down on his knees, repentant and humiliated. She gave him her small,
sandalled foot to kiss. After that, Tallien became abject.
"You know that I would die for you, Theresia!" he murmured passionately.
This was the second time to-night that such an assertion had been made
in this room. And both had been made in deadly earnest, whilst the fair
listener had remained equally indifferent to both. And for the second
time to-night, Theresia passed her cool white hand over the bent head of
an ardent worshipper, whilst her lips murmured vaguely:
"Foolish! Oh, how foolish! Why do men torture themselves, I wonder, with
senseless jealousy?"
Instinctively she turned her small head in the direction of the passage
and the little kitchen, where Bertrand Moncrif had found temporary and
precarious shelter. Self-pity and a kind of fierce helplessness not
untinged with remorse made her eyes appear resentful and hard.
There, in the stuffy little kitchen at the end of the dark, dank
passage, love in its pure sense, happiness, brief perhaps but unalloyed,
and certainly obscure, lay in wait for her. Here, at her feet, was
security in the present turmoil, power, and a fitting background for her
beauty and her talents. She did not want to lose Bertrand; indeed, she
did not intend to lose him. She sighed a little regretfully as she
thought of his good looks, his enthusiasm, his selfless ardour. Then she
looked down once more on the narrow shoulders, the lank, colourless
hair, the bony hands of the erstwhile lawyer's clerk to whom she had
already promised marriage, and she shuddered a little when she
remembered that those same hands into which she had promised to place
her own and which now grasped hers in passionate adoration had, of a
certainty, signed the order for those execrable massacres which had for
ever sullied the early days of the Revolution. For a moment--a brief
one, in truth--she marvelled if union with such a man was not too heavy
a price to pay for immunity and for power.
But the hesitancy lasted only a few seconds. The next, she had thrown
back her head as if in defiance of the whisperings of conscience and of
heart. She need not lose her youthful lover after all. He was satisfied
with so little! A few kind words here, an occasional kiss, a promise or
two, and he would always remain her willing slave.
It were foolish indeed, and far, far too late, to give way to sentiment
at this hour, when Tallien's influence in the Convention was second only
to that of Robespierre, whilst Bertrand Moncrif was a fugitive, a
suspect, a poor miserable fanatic, whose hot-headedness was for ever
landing him from one dangerous situation into another.
So, after indulging in the faintest little sigh of yearning for the
might-have-been, she met her latest adorer's worshipping glance with a
coquettish air of womanly submission which completed his subjugation,
and said lightly:
"And now give me my orders for to-night, mon ami."
She settled herself down more comfortably upon the settee, and
graciously allowed him to sit on a low chair beside her.
§2
The turbulent little incident was closed. Theresia had her way, and
poor, harassed Tallien succeeded in shutting away in the innermost
recesses of his heart the pangs of jealousy which still tortured him.
His goddess now was all smiles, and the subtle flattery implied by her
preference for him above his many rivals warmed his atrophied heart and
soothed his boundless vanity.
We must accept the verdict of history that Theresia Cabarrus never loved
Tallien. The truth appears to be that what love she was capable of had
undoubtedly been given to Bertrand Moncrif, whom she would not entirely
dismiss from his allegiance, even though she had at last been driven
into promising marriage to the powerful Terrorist.
It is doubtful if, despite that half-hearted and wholly selfish love for
the young royalist, she had ever intended that he should be more to her
than a slavish worshipper, a friend on whom she could count for
perpetual adoration or mere sentimental dalliance; but a husband--never!
Certain it is that even Tallien, influential as he was, was only a
pis-aller. The lovely Spaniard, we make no doubt, would have preferred
Robespierre as a future husband, or, failing him, Louis-Antoine St.
Just. But the latter was deeply enamoured of another woman; and
Robespierre was too cautious, too ambitious, to allow himself to be
enmeshed.
So she fell back on Tallien.
§3
"Give me my orders for to-night," the lovely woman had said to her
future lord. And he--a bundle of vanity and egoism--was flattered and
soothed by this submission, though he knew in his heart of hearts that
it was only pretence.
"You will help me, Theresia?" he pleaded.
She nodded, and asked coldly: "How?"
"You know that Robespierre suspects me," he went on, and instinctively,
at the mere breathing of that awe-inspiring name, his voice sank to a
murmur. "Ever since I came back from Bordeaux."
"I know. Your leniency there is attributed to me."
"It was your influence, Theresia----" he began.
"That turned you," she broke in coldly, "from a bloodstained beast into
a right-minded justiciary. Do you regret it?"
"No, no!" he protested; "since it gained me your love."
"Could I love a beast of prey?" she retorted. "But if you do not regret,
you are certainly afraid."
"Robespierre never forgives," he rejoined vaguely. "And he had sent me
to Bordeaux to punish, not to pardon."
"Then you _are_ afraid!" she insisted. "Has anything happened?"
"No; only his usual hints--his vague threats. You know them."
She nodded.
"The same," he went on sombrely, "that he used ere he struck Danton."
"Danton was hot-headed. He was too proud to appeal to the populace who
idolised him."
"And I have no popularity to which I can appeal. If Robespierre strikes
at me in the Convention, I am doomed----"
"Unless you strike first."
"I have no following. We none of us have. Robespierre sways the
Convention with one word."
"You mean," she broke in more vehemently, "that you are all cringing
cowards--the abject slaves of one man. Two hundred of you are longing
for this era of bloodshed to cease; two hundred would stay the pitiless
work of the guillotine--and not one is plucky enough to cry, 'Halt! It
is enough!'"
"The first man who cries 'Halt!' is called a traitor," Tallien retorted
gloomily. "And the guillotine will not rest until Robespierre himself
has said, 'It is enough!'"
"He alone knows what he wants. He alone fears no one," she exclaimed,
almost involuntarily giving grudging admiration where in truth she felt
naught but loathing.
"I would not fear either, Theresia," he protested, and there was a note
of tender reproach in his voice, "if it were not for you."
"I know that, mon ami," she rejoined with an impatient little sigh.
"Well, what do you want me to do?"
He leaned forward in his chair, closer to her, and did not mark--poor
fool!--that, as he drew near, she recoiled ever so slightly from him.
"There are two things," he said insinuatingly, "which you could do,
Theresia, either of which would place Robespierre under such lasting
obligation to you that he would admit us into the inner circle of his
friends, trust us and confide in us as he does in St. Just or Couthon."
"Trust you, you mean. He never would trust a woman."
"It means the same thing--security for us both."
"Well?" she rejoined. "What are these two things?"
He paused a moment, appeared to hesitate; then said resolutely:
"Firstly, there is Bertrand Moncrif . . . and his Fatalists----"
Her face hardened. She shook her head.
"I warned Robespierre about to-night," she said. "I knew that a lot of
young fools meant to cause a fracas in the Rue St. Honoré. But the
whole thing has been a failure, and Robespierre has no use for
failures."
"It need not be a failure--even yet."
"What do you mean?"
"Robespierre will be here directly," he urged, in a whisper rendered
hoarse with excitement "Bertrand Moncrif is here---- Why not deliver the
young traitor, and earn Robespierre's gratitude?"
"Oh!" she broke in indignant protest. Then, as she caught the look of
jealous anger which at her obvious agitation suddenly flared up in his
narrow eyes again, she went on with a careless shrug of her statuesque
shoulders: "Bertrand is not here, as I told you, my friend. So these
means of serving your cause are out of my reach."
"Theresia," he urged, "by deceiving me----"
"By tantalizing me," she broke in harshly, "you do yourself no good. Let
us understand one another, my friend," she went on more gently. "You
wish me to serve you by serving the dictator of France. And I tell you
you'll not gain your ends by taunting me."
"Theresia, we must make friends with Robespierre! He has the power; he
rules over France. Whilst I----"
"Ah!" she retorted with vehemence. "That is where you and your
weak-kneed friends are wrong! You say that Robespierre rules France.
'Tis not true. It is not Robespierre, the man, who rules; it is his
name! The name of Robespierre has become a fetish, an idolatry. Before
it every head is bent and every courage cowed. It rules by the fear
which it evokes and by the slavery which it compels under the perpetual
threat of death. Believe me," she insisted, "'tis not Robespierre who
rules, but the guillotine which he wields! And we are all of us
helpless--you and I and your friends. And all the others who long to see
the end of this era of bloodshed and of revenge, we have got to do as he
tells us--pile up crime upon crime, massacre upon massacre, and bear the
odium of it all, while he stands aloof in darkness and in solitude, the
brain that guides, whilst you and your party are only the hands that
strike. Oh! the humiliation of it! And if you were but men, all of you,
instead of puppets----"
"Hush, Theresia, in heaven's name!" Tallien broke in peremptorily at
last. He had vainly tried to pacify her while she poured forth the vials
of her resentment and her contempt. But now his ears, attuned to
sensitiveness by an ever-present danger, had caught a sound which
proceeded from the vestibule--a sound which made him shudder--a
footstep--the opening of a door--a voice. "Hush!" he entreated. "Every
dumb wall has ears these days!"
She broke into a harsh, excited little laugh.
"You are right, my friend," she said under her breath. "What do I care,
after all? What do any of us care now, so long as our necks are fairly
safe upon our shoulders! But I'll not sell Bertrand," she added firmly.
"If I did it I should despise myself too much and hate you worse. So
tell me quickly what else I can do to propitiate the ogre!"
"He'll tell you himself," Tallien murmured hurriedly, as the sounds in
the vestibule became more loud and distinctive. "Here they are! And, in
heaven's name, Theresia, remember that our lives are at that one man's
mercy!"